This imagery continues the dream conversation (see Defining How It Is) because sometimes in the course of a night of dreaming the images begin by presenting the case, or the situation, that we are dealing with. Subsequent imagery, which may seem like completely separate dreams, will often further what has been established and then allow a look at the issue from different angles. In this way, we are offered an unbiased view that can allow us to better understand where we are. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)

Jeane:And then it feels like I have a dream where I have to go to an event at my niece’s house. For this event, I need an outfit that will be kind of interchangeable. In other words, I need to be able to change from something that I wear for dinner to something I wear outside, to maybe something I wear swimming. And I go to the store and I actually find this outfit that’s kind of green with black polka dots on it. And it has a skirt and a top, and then maybe a shorter skirt and a bathing suit that all match. So I’ve taken it over to show it to her; so this would allow me to change rapidly for each function.

At the same time, I want to be able during this time to have dinner with her daughter and new husband, who I know are working a lot of hours, but then I find that they are coming and spending weekends at the mother’s house because they see it’s easier to eat there. So that means that I should be able to get together with them, too.

Having worked all that out, I seem to go back to see how the experiment in the first dream is working and realize that, at this point in time, it’s not working that well, that having shaved one person’s beard and making the other person do things they are not used to, is not flowing well right now, at this point. And that maybe I need to let them continue with their traditions for a while longer.

John: This is somethingthat has to be found, as a naturalness, as an understanding, as a graciousness, in which there is no design based upon projection. Everyone sees life as something in which you have to put on a particular quality or attire in order to get things to happen.

Like you notice how that is. That it’s easier if you accommodate a certain persona with regards to getting together with your niece’s daughter and husband and whatnot. In other words, so that you wouldn’t be standing out as someone peculiar and separate from how they needed to appreciate life. You’re seeing yourself as having a greater fluidity by having made this kind of adjustment, in terms of yourself, and so you’re inclined to think that that was an adjustment that speeded things along.

So you realize that then, when you take and you approach something that has fostered its own design, like the guy from Niger, following an evolvement or type of tariqa, so to speak, where he did what he did in accordance with an established tradition, and the other had its established tradition, that this sort of thing worked. And when each of those was taken out of their recognized established tradition, they had problems in terms of coping.

So, you’re sitting thinking, “oh, well, perhaps I should just let them do what they do best in terms of their mannerism.” But deep down you know that that also blocks something from happening. In other words, Niger is Niger, and a bearded approach is a bearded approach, and beyond what is able to happen with that quality or mannerism is something even more. But they cannot function without their filter.

So what your dream is doing is your dream is taking a situation, or a scenario, and plopping you into that scenario and pointing out that how it is that you are in that scenario functions according to certain prescribed guidelines. You still see yourself having to subordinate yourself to those specific and particular guidelines.

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John: My dream dealt with similar themes as yours (see The Dance of Life), but instead of it being a literal dream, it was more a repetition of images that had a simplistic nature about them.

The simple images were ones that felt controllable in terms of how I would like to see them unfold, yet at the same time they felt incomplete. I was always getting a barrage of images that had more going on in them – they were multidimensional – and they kept me off balance.

The simple images had to do with my personal well being, and making choices; they felt good. The more complex ones led to a greater outcome – they actually took into account the past, present, and future of Creation all at the same time. They are more about the core of things than the details of things.

What I’m saying is that if I’m allowed to shape the outcome (of the simple images) so that they make sense to me, in order to keep from confusing and complicating my life, that’s when I fail to appreciate the fullness of existence, and I remain unaware of what is unfolding.

Said another way, I’m only looking at what I want to look at, instead of seeing all that is going on. I’m not allowing other aspects to have their importance. I’m trying to steer things according to what I want and think feels right.

The more complex images have all kinds of possibilities going on simultaneously. I haven’t filtered them by my personal choices. These images have complexity and combinations that aren’t defining or screening things out – they take everything into account and portray life more as it actually is.

So the images that portray what I want to believe or see are personally chosen by me, and are limited by the veils of my own defense mechanisms. Those veils allow me to feel safer, more protected, less confused, and more at ease with everything, but I’m giving up the big picture. In doing so, I lose the ability to function on other levels, i.e., I’m not able to see the signs of God (so to speak) that provide me with information about these other levels and the whole, simultaneously.

If I limit myself to my own perspective, it’s like drinking my own Kool-Aid – I’ll never really know what’s going on. It’s drinking from a cup that’s full of myself. To expand out of myself, and to access these other levels, is to accept the flow in all of life, a flow that leads to a greater perception of the whole.

A human being isn’t able to know what’s going on when they’re caught in personal perspectives, because those perspectives are just images that we shape to fit our expectations – they stifle the natural processes of life.

Our veils can only be removed when we accept everything in life. The world is like a great painting – the surface may seem flat, yet there is a much larger experience available to us when we explore the hidden depths within.

When we only see what we want to see, we deafen ourselves to the call of the greater process in which we exist. We foolishly do this because we don’t have a real understanding of our wholeness. If we did, we could push right through the veils and begin to drop the defense mechanisms and personal barriers that we think are so important.

John: For the last two days we’ve been talking about the concept of not being personally involved in life (see It’s Not Personal and We Are What We Radiate). If we dig more deeply into it, we could say that being personally involved in life interferes with the natural flow of things. It can affect our health and the people around us.

So the question always comes back to: “How can you not be personally involved in life?” There are reasons we do have an ego, but we cannot have the ego running the show. We are meant to give access, though our lives, to these inner connections, or higher connections.

That is part of our role, as humans, in the universe. When our ego views the world as being all about us – “How could this happen to me? – we cut the universe off from our higher connections. In turn, that prevents meaningful change from happening in our lives as well.

So last night, I was working with this concept, in the sense of being more aware of the energy I radiate and how it affects people and things around me. My hope was that if I stayed up late and worked everything through with the emails I had to send, then I would be done with it – I’d have some peace and go to sleep.

Interestingly, the work I did stayed with me energetically, and I was able to see this energy when I awoke; I could sense how it affected me physically.

Usually, during sleep, we absorb the energies we collect during the day, or process them out. And if you can absorb them, and still reflect the inner into the outer, then you are touching life in a way that opens up, enabling something from the other side to participate.

Last night I saw, for the first time, just how potent this energy could be. Like I said, I had hoped that I would get this work stuff behind me, but what happened was that I was churning with it, and it wasn’t absorbed by my sleep. It actually manifested as feeling physically sick in the morning.

It was as if it embedded itself into the matter of my nature. So the observation for me was that this proves that we affect our environment, and ourselves, directly by how we energetically feel.

Normally we are so dense and distracted that we don’t notice such things. When we are ego-based, our experience is slowed down (dense) to the point where we don’t really recognize when we are out of balance. Therefore, we don’t recognize the need to re-adjust.

Of course, if we are reacting emotionally, then we are throwing the balance off even farther. And if we stew on an issue, we actually begin to release an energetic into the air – we don’t have to say anything.

Saying it will intensify it, but just carrying something that is unkind or judgmental can actually be a toxin – it can poison a situation, or us. And, as result, the body can manifest changes to itself – on a cellular level – that are detrimental and unhealthy.

And so when I woke up I had the sense that what had stewed in me before bed was not properly dispelled. This experience is enough to show me that it’s not possible to hide anything on an energetic level – everything I do touches something else. It may be subtle, but the influence is carried into the world around me nonetheless.

This tells me that I’ve got to be more conscious of what I’m thinking about or processing emotionally. I need to choose to radiate things that are more meaningful. Otherwise I can be negatively impacting my body, my loved ones, and everything else I come in contact with in a careless and unconscious way. Ultimately, we pay a price for that.